


keeps raining all the time

by couldaughter



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Post Foxglove Summer, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3181760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Grant loves being part of the Metropolitan Police, but the Folly has a much wider jurisdiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	keeps raining all the time

Being one of only two licensed magicians in the Metropolitan Police had seemed like a fun idea at the time, I was sure. In practice, it was a terrible idea and we probably should’ve died multiple times, especially after a third (dubiously licensed) magician went rogue on us and we were back to one officer in the field and one at the nick. And by ‘in the field’ I don’t usually mean ‘in an actual field’, but the job was wide ranging and often messy, because we were obliged to investigate, in the words of a well respected DCI of my acquaintance, any ‘weird bollocks’ that cropped up pretty much anywhere in the British Isles.

Well, I wasn’t sure about Ireland. I didn’t think Nightingale would hold with leprechauns, or whatever else they’re hiding across the Irish Sea. Kelpies, maybe. Selkies? I made a mental note to google it once I had a reliable signal.

Anyway, this ridiculously wide jurisdiction, especially for a division which was nominally supposed to be limited to London, meant that on that particular weekend I was navigating my Asbo through some very narrow country roads to Brixton (Devon, not London, no matter how much I wanted it to be at 4am when I’d been rudely awakened by a squawking Airwave), which was practically Dartmoor but with less horses.

Despite what you might think, the countryside is actually a terrible place for magical investigation - not least because there’s either too many _vestigia_ or none at all; living things are terrible at holding onto them and the countryside is, obviously, mostly grass and trees which are definitely alive if not, by standard definitions, sentient. On the other hand, the call from Devon  & Cornwall Police had mentioned a church, which meant the promise of stone, which held onto _vestigia_ longer than my mum held onto tinned food. I hoped the fact the SIO had been sure enough something weird was going on to call in The Folly meant I hadn’t wasted the drive.

Due to an unexpected bout of traffic on the A38, where they’d decided to replace an entire bridge and thus shut down all but one lane, it was nearing eleven by the time I finally parked next to some grazing donkeys about a hundred metres from the church. Parking directly next to it was out of the question, as the meagre space had already been completely filled up with the various police vehicles associated with, well, I wasn’t entirely sure. I got the feeling it was probably a suspicious death if not an outright murder, but that came from the atmosphere rather than anyone actually telling me anything.

At the time, I was much not fond of the countryside following a series of somewhat disastrous events in Rushpool the previous summer, when I nearly got gored by a unicorn and then kidnapped by elves, or some similar variety of fae which hadn’t given us their name yet. I’d started privately referring to them as Mollies, but I had a feeling Nightingale wouldn’t approve.

Thankfully, someone I assumed to be in charge spotted me as I walked up the road to the church. She was a white woman, a few inches shorter than me with a no nonsense expression and close-cropped bleach blonde hair.

“DC Peter Grant,” I said carefully, aware that she might not have been briefed on ‘weird bollocks’, including but not limited to demons, ghosts, Rivers, leprechauns and telemarketers. “From the Met.”

She nodded, and we shook hands. “DS English,” she said, her Scottish accent cutting through the still country air. She gave me a look that I recognised from Stephanopoulos, the one that said “I’ve heard all the jokes, so don’t even try.” I shook my head vigorously as if to deny I could ever even entertain the idea of making fun of her, and followed her up the path through the graveyard. I got the feeling she’d probably voted Yes in the referendum and was still working out some frustration.

“I don’t know if you got any details on the phone,” she began. “But the gist of it is: someone died in a locked church and it’s got Falcon written all over it.” I was almost tired enough to ask if she meant that literally but stopped myself just in time.

I saw what she meant as soon as we stepped through the door into the knave. I confess my architectural research had leant towards the functional rather than spiritual, but it was impossible to swing a cat in the world of historical architecture without hitting at least a few cathedrals and a notable country church or two. I could at least tell that the church was a mish mash of a few different eras, with the earliest being around the 1500s, although I wouldn’t stake my career on it. Fairly attractive in its own way, and (according to a pinboard at the back of the church which I read a fair while afterwards) just coming off an extensive renovation project that had, among other things, installed the kitchen and serving area I could just make out behind the police tape and general bustle of the crime scene.

The crime scene wasn’t the worst thing I’d seen in the course of my service to Queen, Country, and Nightingale, but it was up there. The body was a white man, probably mid fifties, and in two pieces. That last part took a few moments to register in my conscious mind, at which point I had to struggle not to take a step back and possibly throw up the breakfast butty I’d scarfed down at a services somewhere around Exeter. I got the feeling throwing up in a church was generally frowned upon.

I gathered from one of the DCs standing around waiting to be let off that the whole thing was bollocks, in those words, and that the door had been locked the evening before by the warden, and then unlocked that morning by the same warden. There was no evidence of forced entry, although that meant little to me having seen Nightingale unlock doors with magic with comparative ease. Since I couldn’t tell that to a random DC who might’ve had me sectioned, I agreed that it sounded like an Agatha Christie novel, and not even one of the enjoyable ones, and went to have a closer look at the body.

I kept my distance for the initial assessment, which I always make just to be sure I absolutely have to get a face full of dead person before I do it. To my admittedly untrained eye, it looked like whatever had cut the man in two had been incredibly neat doing it, which was the first suspicious detail I noted, as most blades will leave at least some tearing. And the second detail, which pinged at about a 100 on my suspicion scale, was that the cut looked like it had been made from the inside outwards. The man’s shirt and jacket had fanned outwards, and I reckoned any attack with a blade would’ve forced fibres into his organs, and left the clothes soaked in blood, but the front of his shirt was practically spotless. I sighed and went to beg some protection off of Forensics.

Having wriggled into a noddy suit and managed to keep down my breakfast with only a little effort, I carefully knelt next to the top half of the body and leant as close as I could without getting blood on my face, which was always disgusting, itchy and, of course, risked contaminating the crime scene. I was wearing a mask and goggles, but there was no such thing as being too careful in my opinion. I took a moment to clear my mind of surface thoughts, particularly the ongoing anxiety over my car being left alone with some loosely contained donkeys, and closed my eyes.

 _Vestigia_ can take a lot of forms, which are generally unhelpful without a bit of context, and with bodies they tend to degrade fast. The _vestigia_ on this body, both halves, were as strong as you might expect those on a nine hours dead corpse to be, but I thought they were a bit unusual. Despite the fact that he’d been bisected at the waist and thus I’d expected at least some pain or horror, the main feeling I got, besides the glow of candles and a whiff of incense was one of surprise. I thought I could sense something else, something sharper, that might have been a _signare_ , but it was gone before I could get a better grasp on it. That was the problem with magic: it was a bloody inconvenience when you wanted it to help out and much too helpful when it could bollix everything up in an instant.

I stood up, again taking care not to step on anything important, and went to report to English. “Definitely something Falcon about it,” I said with an assertive nod and a fervent wish that my insides would stop trembling in her presence. At least I’d had a few years to get used to the Met’s resident force of nature DCI Stephanopoulos, which had been helped by the discovery that she kept chickens and her wife ran an Etsy store selling tiny felted animals. “I couldn’t tell you anything exact yet, but hopefully my guv’nor will be down in a day or two and he’s got a lot more hands on experience than I do.” I didn’t mention that this was about 80 years more experience than me, or that the hands on experience had included a few unlucky Tiger Tanks, both because I wanted her to actually believe me and because it was a bit embarrassing to say out loud. 

English nodded, which was a relief. “Contact your governor, and then get down to Plymouth station. I expect someone will give you directions.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the disabled exit, which had been propped open to get equipment into the church, and then walked off to deal with something more important to the inquiry, like getting coffee or going to the toilet. I got the distinct impression she didn’t like the idea of anything extranormal interfering with the good old CofE, which I thought was a bit weird for a woman who’d probably grown up Presbyterian. And before you ask, Religious Studies, year 8. Comparative Christianity, or whatever bullshit name they gave the units that lasted two lessons and half of _that_ being a BBC2 documentary from the 90s.

On the way out I made sure to check the keyhole for _vestigia_. Nothing. I stepped outside and pulled out my Samsung, switched on the battery and rang Nightingale. He picked up on the second ring. I gave him the pertinent details, which mostly boiled down to ‘Something fucking weird is happening down here’ but I dressed that up with some actual observations, an attempt at professional language in case any random DCs happened to poke their head out, and a hopeful inquiry as to what he thought might have happened. 

He gave it some thought, to the point that I thought he’d hung up and nearly turned off my phone again. “I can’t say I’ve come across any _formae_ that would bisect a person, not because there isn’t a _forma_ for cutting but because, well, I’m not fond of using magic for the express purpose of causing harm. However, considering the many and varied talents of the Faceless One, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d manufactured one somehow.” He paused. I was thinking about Patrick Mulkern, who, after a spirited criminal career, had careered a little past his jurisdiction and been burned from the inside out for his trouble. _Inside out_. I shivered a little and pretended it was the cold. “I should be able to come down tomorrow or the day after, assuming Oswald and his granddaughter arrive promptly.”

That had been my idea. After the initial burst of inspiration while stuck in Fairyland the previous summer, I’d expanded my idea for a sort of magical conference into a general ‘please can we have two active officers on a case because I nearly got abducted by fairies’ rotating guard in the Folly. It couldn’t be left unguarded, but I really didn’t want to be forced to exchange myself for a changeling in future and I still had the feeling Nightingale would’ve headed that off before it got to the hostage situation, if only with some veiled threats and judicious application of his public school charm. The public school being basically Hogwarts for rich people apparently made no difference.

So when a case from out of London came up, the old guard came visiting, with their families, and hopefully no one used so much magic they keeled over while Nightingale got to come to the glorious countryside on the rare occasions our services were called upon. I was rather proud of it, and I got the impression Nightingale was proud of me, however much he tried to look disapproving when I suggested anything involving words like ‘rota’ or ‘due process’. He’d been getting better about due process. He refused to stray further than a few miles from the Folly for more than two or three days at a time, but that was usually enough to clear up anything magical - assuming he even had to leave the house in the first place. Most of the cases we got pulled in for turned out to be kids not too much younger than me mucking about, or old school satanists who thought human sacrifice was the in thing - creepy and deeply illegal, but not actually magical, so not our jurisdiction.

With Nightingale’s assurance, and a further admonition to stay safe and not wander off, which I took to mean ‘don’t piss off any more fairies’ couched in the posh accent and stiff upper lip, he rang off. I got the impression he was worried about me, which I found oddly charming, rather than patronising as I would’ve before Skygarden or even Rushpool. After making sure my phone was off and the battery was disconnected, I went back to my car, which was still clean and thankfully remained unmolested by the donkeys, and set off for the big city.

* * *

Plymouth’s Police enquiry office was located opposite Drake’s Circus, a truly awe inspiring work of mid noughties architecture which confused the eye and honestly made me feel a bit queasy. I was later unsurprised to discover it had been nominated for Ugliest Building In Britain a few years earlier, although I thought it was a bit unfair to compare it to eyesores like the MI5 headquarters.

The drive there involved some heavy traffic, as avoiding the roadworks only gave a limited number of options, one of which was consistently flooded out, so nearly every soul in the South Hams going to Plymouth and beyond was using the last remaining route. I couldn’t say I enjoyed the scenery when I was stuck behind a Citreon with a collection of embarrassing bumper stickers, but looking back I suppose the Devon countryside is slightly nicer than some other featureless fields I’ve had the pleasure of seeing during long drives cross country. It wasn’t particularly idyllic, but it wasn’t the ‘Dark Satanic Mills’ of song either, so I counted my blessings and almost cheered when the traffic cleared up alongside a huge Sainsbury’s.

The incident room was decently sized, and I didn’t make too much of a stir when I walked in, having tipped my hat at reception and been waved through without even mentioning the word Falcon. I supposed going any further into the south west I would’ve been the sole representative diversity in the force but a quick sweep of the room revealed a hijabi woman and another mixed race man, probably in his 50s. It was difficult to tell from across the room. I nodded at him when he looked up and then went to introduce myself to the DCI.

“DC Grant, sir, from the Met.” I tried to look as unassuming and totally-not-a-magician-ish as possible, but I got the feeling I was fooling nobody.

DCI Palmer, as I was introduced, seemed pleased to see me. At least, he didn’t actively sneer when he realised I was, in fact, totally-a-magician-ish. “Right. Get over to that corner,” he said, waving vaguely to a cover bathed dramatically in shadow, but otherwise looking perfectly normal, “and do whatever research you need to do. I don’t need to know about it, and I’d prefer if you kept that shit out of your reports to Devon & Cornwall. You’re strictly a consultant on this case.” He waved me off again when I hadn’t moved within a New York minute.

There was the sneer. It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, though, I reflected as I navigated around desks and officers to sit at the far corner terminal. It was connected to HOLMES, so I logged in and set up a few actions taking care not to outright say ‘research bitey monsters with big claws’. After that, I went haring off to Wikipedia and a select collection of pokey websites that clearly hadn’t been updated since the mid-nineties. I’d scrounged these up over a period of months for occasions like this, when the Folly’s library was far away and I needed to do some quick and dirty research.

There had been no DNA evidence found on the scene, another detail which English had included when she told me the case had Falcon all over it. Obviously it would be difficult to figure out how exactly Paul Short’s torso (the top half of the body had been identified during my interminable hour long drive to the station, and the bottom half sort of lumped in after the fact) had been lovingly and gently detached from his legs, and whether there were any DNA traces from the attacker on the body, until the autopsy report came in. Which reminded me to call Dr Walid, who was only too happy to consult on this case as long as I could make nice with the pathologist at Derriford, who’d apparently been a bit of a rival of his at university.

I made the appropriate arrangements with some smooth talking over the Airwave, and returned to a luridly decorated geocities page about the Beast of Bodmin Moor. There were clipart dogs and tigers and sundry other animals, which was funny in a sort of morbid way, and clipart blood pools, which seemed excessive. I knew enough about the South West to know that Bodmin was actually in Cornwall, but I didn’t want to overlook anything since that was generally what caused cases to blow up in your face - sometimes literally.

After half an hour of eye strain I felt like I was almost an expert on the mysterious Beast of Bodmin and its fictional relative the Hound of the Baskervilles, which was a more likely culprit since, as I’d discovered, the local aristocracy included a few Baskervilles (and some Bastards, who I hoped didn’t fit the name). I’ve found that assuming something’s fictional is all well and good until it bites you on the arse, or attempts to gore you with its horn. I knew it was unlikely the murderer was a creature at all, but it pays to be thorough and I didn’t want to sit there looking gormless in case some enterprising local copper dumped a mountain of paperwork on me.

I shut off the laptop, stretched, and looked around. It was getting into the early evening, and a few people had filtered off into other rooms, or to find coffee, or possibly both. The woman I’d noticed earlier gave me a cheery wave and I wandered over, hoping to find a local guide or at least someone with directions to the nearest pub.

“Hi,” she said, sticking out a hand. “DC Omar.”

“DC Grant,” I returned, and we shook hands. “Look, this is a bit unprofessional but do you know anyone I could con into being a bit of a tour guide? I’m a bit lost outside London, if I’m honest.” I put on my best clueless face, in the hopes she’d feel sorry for me rather than laugh in my face. 

She grinned. “Well, the investigation is ongoing but I’m sure this tour guide could spot you a pint.” I smiled back.

I followed her out of the door, having made sure neither of us were needed until morning, and set off in the direction of the sea. We were halfway to the Barbican before we got back onto the topic of the murder. 

“What’s a London boy like you doing down here, then?” Amani, as she’d told me to call her the second we’d been officially off duty, had moved to Plymouth as a constable and never left. 

I understood the appeal, if only because things were a lot less dangerous and, coincidentally, a lot less magic than in London. “Got called in as a specialist.” I decided to go with being aloof and mysterious, although Lesley always said I looked crosseyed doing it. Thinking about Lesley was a bad idea, though, so I resolved not to do it until I could shut myself in my room at the Folly and be very un-British and emotional for a bit. 

Amani rolled her eyes. “Alright, don’t tell me.”

“Sorry,” I said, already dropping the act because my eyes were beginning to hurt, “I’d like to tell you but my governor is getting here tomorrow and he’d probably give me a bollocking for _breaching a sacred trust_ ad nauseum.”

She raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. I could feel the disbelief coming off her in waves, although in this case I was pretty sure it was human instinct and not _vestigia_.

“He’s a bit of a traditionalist.” I didn’t say that while Nightingale used to be fairly tolerant of my occasional initiations into the world of magic, after Skygarden he’d got very touchy about it. This was almost definitely because Lesley, the first person I’d introduced to magic (albeit accidentally), had shot me in the back with a taser and run off with the literally faceless enemy.

We continued in comfortable silence for a few more minutes, and then Amani took my arm and dragged me into a pub decorated with rainbow flags, which I knew meant one thing and one thing only. And while. I will admit that there has been the occasional bloke that turned my head, acknowledging that and actually doing anything about it are two very different things. At the time I was willing to sit comfortably in a nice safe closet and spend my free time for romance with Beverley Brook, medium sized river and astonishingly attractive woman.

The pub was called The Swallow, which took me a moment to parse but I had to admit was a slightly classier double entendre than I might’ve come up with. Whatever my personal feelings on the matter, by that point we were inside the pub and it would’ve been rude to walk out on Amani, who was looking at me with the beginnings of anxiety.

“Nice place,” I said noncommittally, “Is the beer here alright?”

She shrugged, but I could tell she was relieved. “I wouldn’t know.” She tugged pointedly at the hijab, and I ducked my head in embarrassment.

“Sorry. Guess I’ll just have to find out.” I pointed at the bar. “Want anything?”

She asked me for a coke, and I went to see just how good the beer was. As it turned out it was rather excellent, which I was pleased with, and I managed to successfully flirt with the bartender, which I was quite proud of. Flirting with men wasn’t something I had a lot of practice with, owing to my mum’s almost supernatural ability to know exactly what I’d been doing and with whom with a single look. Sierra Leone has laws against that sort of thing, although as I understand it they’re pretty close to a repeal. I sighed.

It was at the point when I’d just set down Amani’s coke and was looking forward to finishing my beer that all the lights in the pub went out. Through the sudden silence and then rising murmur of discontent, I strained all my senses and just caught sight of something that looked a bit thaumaturgical, as Dr Walid might insist on calling it. I gave Amani a quick thumbs up and then dived after it, pushing through the back door. As the thing left the lights had flickered back on, which was a pretty good indication something supernatural was going on. Let it never be said I let something obvious go unstated, and all that. 

The night was especially dark, with the moon hidden behind clouds and a bit of drizzle starting to pick up that was the price of living on the coast. The supernatural whatever-it-was was still just visible, but just to be sure I conjured a werelight and let it float towards the ghost, or whatever the fuck it was. I heard a gasp from behind me, which I assumed was Amani doing some good policing and coming to back me up, which was very comforting. Although possibly dampened by the fact I was doing magic and hoped not to let the whole South West in on it.

I turned around and gestured at her with a motion I vaguely remembered the lollipop lady using when I was about five. I hoped it was universally understood as meaning ‘stay there’ but Amani crept forward anyway. I gave her a very unimpressed look, which she rebuffed with a truly epic glare. 

“What the _fuck_ is going on, Grant?” she whispered urgently.

I considered my options and went with the truth. “Magic. And possibly a ghost, but maybe worse.”

“ _Worse_.” She gave me a look that would’ve shrivelled a lesser man into dust. Luckily I had to interact with Lady Ty on a semi regular basis and was getting better at facing angry glares without pissing myself.

I couldn’t think of any _formae_ for dealing with ghosts or, as I was beginning to suspect, poltergeists, so I went with my gut and retreated back into the pub. My werelight went out and, I assume, the poltergeist disappeared somewhere else.

Me and Amani sat in silence for a good while, sipping our drinks and pointedly not looking at each other. Eventually I broke, because I’m shit at long and emotional silences and like to fill them with meaningless banter.

“So how do you feel about magic?” I asked, because sounding like a tit is pretty much mandatory when discussing the magical arts. 

Amani took a long gulp of her coke and looked thoughtful. “I like Harry Potter.”

I laughed. “So do I. Actual magic is nothing like that, unfortunately, but I still dream of my Hogwarts letter.” I made an appropriately tragic face, which got a laugh.

“Is that what your specialty is, then?”

“Yes,” I said, finishing off the last of my beer and standing up. “Magic and unicorns and elves, all that fun stuff.”

Amani gave me a look. “Unicorns?”

“Hand on heart.” I said with a grin. I didn’t mention the half a metre long razor sharp horns, which I felt would rather ruin the effect. I gestured at the door. “I should probably call this in to my governor, and then I might have to report to Palmer.”

Amani nodded understandingly. “See you in the morning.” I waved, and as I turned around I caught her looking speculatively at a group of women huddled next to the bar. I mentally wished her luck and went to find some cover to call Nightingale without getting wet.

He agreed that I’d been right to go after it, and although he didn’t know what it was either he said he’d bring down some books for the next day. Apparently the Oswalds had arrived safely and were now ensconced in the dining room being served with great enthusiasm by Molly, who remembered Hugh from when he’d actually lived there before the war. Apparently Toby was also warming up to them, although I had a feeling he was generally most fond of whoever gave the longest walks and/or the most leftovers at dinner.

I rang off with a promise to keep my phone on in the morning, and went, without much enthusiasm, back to the incident room to talk to Palmer. I summarised what had happened and promised a report for him in the morning - unofficial, of course - and carefully left out which pub we’d been at. After that, I was finally free to escape to the hotel, which was clean and quiet and therefore exactly what I needed.

I was asleep within ten minutes of getting in the door.

* * *

Nightingale arrived the next morning with no more fanfare than the one attracted by the Jag, which is rightly admired by most people as a beautiful car. However, I’d wasted more than one afternoon on cleaning it so I kept my eyes off the bodywork and hubcaps and went to talk to the governor directly.

“How many books did you bring?” I asked, peering through the window into the back seat. I could see a threateningly musty pile of books which, if I was particularly lucky that day, might only be fifty percent Latin.

He gave me a _look_ , which was similar to the one Amani had given me but was backed up by the long rusted wrecks of a few Tiger Tanks. I looked appropriately cowed, and then followed him up the short path through the graveyard. DC English was inside, along with a few other constables who were clearly about to go canvassing the locals. I gave them an encouraging nod as they trailed out behind us, and Nightingale introduced himself to English, who wasn’t exactly charmed by the public school accent or his superior rank but did seem interested in the magic, which was fair enough.

“So you lot deal with these, ah, incidents all over the UK?” She asked, clearly desperate for something to ask that wasn’t ‘how the fuck does magic work’, which, to be fair, we didn’t know the answer to either. Even if I had ruined a secondary school’s worth of calculators trying to find out.

Nightingale nodded. “They’re not particularly frequent, and as far as I’m aware neither Cardiff nor Glasgow has their own dedicated unit to deal with them.” He didn’t mention Ireland because he had no idea either.

DC English nodded, and then waved her hand at the area of the church that was still cordoned off. “We have to vacate the church in a few days so the services can resume, so whatever you’re about to do it needs to be contained and unlikely to cause damage.” She paused. “Sir.”

He nodded again, and then ducked under the cordon much more gracefully than anyone had any right to. I followed after a moment, exchanging raised eyebrows with English, and went to stand by him where the bloodstain hadn’t quite been scrubbed away. Forensics had been and gone while I was waiting for Nightingale to arrive, although I noted that _he’d_ managed to avoid the traffic, lucky bastard.

“What are we looking for?” I asked quietly.

“Well, besides the fact that we won’t be using our eyes,” said Nightingale with more sarcasm than I felt was strictly necessary, “I suspect we’re dealing with a malevolent spirit. Similar to the one you trapped in a fencepost, although much less powerful.”

I suppressed a shudder. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to talk about Mr Punch without wanting to, which was a shame because with several thousand of my cousins still being school age I’ve been forced to watch a few Punch and Judy shows since he dissolved Lesley’s face. Luckily the classic script’s fallen out of favour, what with the domestic abuse and dead dog. “Right,” I said as confidently as I could manage. “So how do we track it?”

“That,” said Nightingale, “is what the books are for.”

It had started raining while we were inside the church, but Nightingale insisted on looking around the graveyard for anything suspicious. “Disturbed graves, defiled gravestones, that sort of thing,” he said, waving vaguely. “I want to see if the spirit originated in the area or if we’ll need to move farther afield.”

The next half an hour was wet, miserable and unsuccessful, and Nightingale even had the grace to be visibly disappointed as we walked back to the Jag. I would’ve used a shield to keep the rain off, but for one thing I wasn’t sure if it would work that well and for another prolonged magic use could kill me, which was in fact slightly worse than getting slowly soaked in drizzle. While he drove, I dutifully wrote down the very few things of note I’d found in the graveyard in my police notebook, mostly graffiti which the church hadn’t yet managed to clean off and a few stones which had fallen over, probably in the wind. There were no incriminating _vestigia_ , anyway, which was as close as I could get to sure without several witness statements and, on a very good day, CCTV footage.

The drive to Plymouth nick was mostly silent, besides the very quiet strains of what I thought sounded like Beethoven coming from the radio. I decided to remain uncultured and not ask, because I’d never talked to Nightingale about classical music and was concerned he might turn out to be one of those people who will never speak to you again if you mix up Chopin and Debussy. To be fair to those people, I’ve met nerds who won’t talk to you if you mix up the two accepted forms of Vulcan, which seems a lot pickier.

We parked at the station at around half three, which gave us plenty of time to get up to the incident room in time for everyone’s paperwork to rise three inches in the air and slam back onto their desks. I was stood behind Nightingale at the doorway, so I didn’t get a full view but I definitely caught a glimpse of something translucent and decidedly non human. When it slid past us at the door I swore I could hear a very familiar laugh starting up, but I was probably imagining things again.

As soon as it’d left, gliding through the adjacent wall and into office space we weren’t allowed into, the entire incident room turned to stare at Nightingale. He smiled. “Well, I suppose that’s enough to prove the drive from London was worth it.” As he went to introduce himself to the shellshocked DCI, who I suspected was deeply regretting ever suggesting that there might be a Falcon element to the case, I made my way across the room and sat next to Amani, who was busily reorganising the paperwork that had been messed up by the poltergeist. Not that we were sure it was a poltergeist, but it looked like one and acted like one so I was sticking with the name.

“What’s happening?” I asked Amani, kneeling under the table to pick up some stray forms. They looked like blank witness statements to me, which either meant someone had been a bit over ambitious with the photocopying or they were expecting a lot more statements than they’d ended up with, which I suspected was a number very close to zero. Brixton was the sort of town where even the young parents got an early night and kept their curtains firmly closed.

She was tapping her foot restlessly on the floor. “Everyone’s a bit wound up,” she said, to which I manfully restrained myself from making an obnoxious reply to the effect of ‘well, _obviously_ ’. “The canvassing didn’t go well, probably because the residents of Brixton have an average age of about five hundred and don’t like to talk about ghosts for fear of the vicar condemning them to hell.”

I thought this was a bit mean, especially given that the vicar, who’d been taking services there for nearly a year, was a very nice middle aged woman with three grown up children and a surprisingly liberal set of politics. But considering how stressful the average murder investigation was (not that there really was such a thing) even _without_ the forces of darkness mucking about and making evidence inadmissible, I waited while Amani let off some steam and made noises when it seemed like she wanted me to agree with her. This is a technique I use on most of my cousins and particularly my dad when he goes on a tangent about jazz.

Eventually she got through her quiet and impressively detailed tirade about some of the witnesses’ frustrating vagueness and I asked if she fancied going back to the pub later. “I quite enjoyed the atmosphere until Peeves blew out the lights.”

“Well, if you want to I’m not going to say no,” she replied, a smile slowly spreading across her face. “I think I made headway with someone yesterday, so if she’s back I might have a chance of introducing a girl to my parents that won’t actually make my dad faint.” She sat up and glanced around. “Huh. Looks like your boss has gone ghost hunting.” She started humming the Ghostbusters theme and wouldn’t stop until I’d poked her in the leg with the sharp end of my pen.

“Oh, wait,” I said, suddenly remembering about the keys. “Do we have a list of everyone with keys to the church?”

She nodded and dove into the stack of papers she’d only just organised. “Right, yeah, there’s not many people allowed access to a church at all hours, you’d be surprised-” She emerged triumphant a few minutes later, and handed me a printed list. As far as I could tell, the only people with access were the vicar, the churchwarden and the head builder on the renovations. Although he’d returned the key there was no guarantee he hadn’t had a duplicate made. I put in an action to check any local locksmiths, and got back to busywork.

We spent another hour sat quietly doing paperwork, which is always fun especially when you’re used to the Met’s way of doing things and keep putting the wrong acronyms on the form and then have to redo them a few times. It was comfortingly monotonous, and after a while I relaxed into the chair, which was something I hadn’t realised I’d stopped doing until I started again, if that makes sense. Once the paperwork was done I picked a book at random from the stack I’d carried in from the car. It was getting close to six when Nightingale returned from whatever he’d been doing, suit still immaculate. He came over to talk to me, and gave Amani a once over before continuing.

“Unfortunately I was unsuccessful in apprehending the spirit,” he began, which I decided was about as far into the deep end as Amani could’ve been thrown without being possessed and having her face fall off. “But I believe I may have an explanation as to why it’s been following you.”

I think the expression is ‘deer in the headlights’. 

Nightingale narrowed his eyes. “Yes, well, that may have been a bit abrupt.” It was as close to an apology as I was likely to get, in public at least where Nightingale remained so stubbornly British you could use his stiff upper lip as an umbrella stand, so I took it.

“Why do you think it’s been following me?” I asked, hoping that my tone conveyed both questions and that I didn’t sound like a whiny ten year old.

Amani answered that one. “Well, both events happened while you were there, right?” Nightingale gave her an approving look, and I had the sudden, horrible realisation that she and Lesley would’ve got on really well. Proper coppers with good observational skills.

I nearly went with a very snotty ‘correlation is not causation’ because sometimes I like to whip out my science a-levels and wave them around a bit, but I had the feeling that this conversation was a bit serious for that. “We don’t know that there haven’t been more events,” I replied after a moment’s thought. “I mean, people aren’t like to report that their wardrobe was hovering for a few seconds, right?” I thought this was a very good question, and it did give Nightingale pause which I held as a personal victory for quite a few months afterwards.

“While that is a fair question,” he said, in what me and Lesley had referred to as his professor voice, “there was enough of a trail between the events that I’d say the poltergeist has somehow locked onto you.”

“Like a tracker,” I said with dawning comprehension. “Wait, it didn’t do anything in my hotel room did it? Because otherwise it just sort of hung around for twelve hours.” Probably being deeply creepy and transparent and possibly looming over things. This also seemed like a reasonable question, so I gave myself another mental point on my policing scorecard and waited for Nightingale to tell me that I’d been levitated by a poltergeist in my sleep, or something equally horrifying.

“I doubt it. It seems reasonable to assume that the poltergeist has to draw energy from its surroundings in order to do mischief, which would take time.” He pulled out his notebook, in which he’d written the approximate timing of each event. I had a look, and noticed that he’d included the gravestones that had been knocked over as well. I asked him why, because I do try to be a good policeman once in a blue moon.

“After talking to the churchwarden I realised that the stones were knocked over a few hours after the murder, and the lack of wind that night would suggest… other means.” Nightingale tucked the notebook back into his jacket pocket. “After that I would estimate that the events have occurred between ten and fourteen hours apart, although on that timeframe it’s possible there was an event while you were still asleep.” He frowned, and then sighed. It was getting dark outside.

Amani took pity on him in the way that only Molly usually does, and no one in the Met would ever dare try. “We were about to go out for a drink, sir, if you wanted to join us.”

Nightingale looked surprised, and apparently was also surprised enough to agree without asking where we were headed. The night was cold but bright, unlike the previous one, and I felt my spirits lift as we made the walk along the Barbican. As the moonlight reflected brightly off of the water, I wondered idly if the Tamar had a _genius loci_ , and then we reached the pub and I remembered that it was plastered with rainbows. I felt like in a film the scene would’ve been shown in slow motion, maybe with me reaching out a heroic hand to pull Amani back before Nightingale reached the door, but because it was real life none of that happened and we crossed the street without incident. Nightingale was looking at the whole display with undisguised confusion, which means most people would’ve been on the floor with their head in their hands. He’d had a lot of practice at restrained British emotionalism over the years.

We went inside anyway, Amani fearlessly dragging Nightingale in behind her, and went to find a free table. After the incident the previous night the crowd was a bit thinner than it had been and it took half the time to get drinks, although this time I didn’t try flirting with the bartender which did hurry things along. Nightingale still looked confused, while Amani had scarpered to talk to her potential girlfriend which I supposed meant I was going to have to explain the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, and possibly the half a century after that as well. I fortified myself with a gulp of beer and set Nightingale’s pint directly in his eyeline.

He looked up and raised his eyebrows, which I took as a cue to explain the existence of the pub and, possibly, the significance of the several thousand rainbows attached to every available surface. I was just struggling to remember what the yellow in the rainbow represented when he interrupted me.

“Peter, I do appreciate this but I’d like to ask why we’re here.” His voice was slightly strained.

I took another fortifying gulp. “Well, sir, as you can see Amani is currently partaking in the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name,” I said as we both glanced across to the bar where Amani was still kissing a tall, mixed race woman who I vaguely remembered seeing the night before. “And while I was technically dragged here under false pretenses, I do technically belong under the umbrella, so.” I stopped the sentence on a preposition, which on any other day Nightingale might have nagged me about, because I could see a dawning comprehension in his face. Which was, luckily, a positive sign and not one that I’d need to drag him to a sensitivity training course at the earliest opportunity.

This was the worst possible time I could’ve had a revelation about the case, so of course the solution to at least one nagging question popped into my head at the exact moment Nightingale sat up properly and leaned forward. Making a split second decision to go for being a friend first rather than a policeman, I too leaned forward while simultaneously wrestling my phone out of my coat pocket. Keeping it under the table, I typed what I hoped would be a coherent message in the morning, and put it back. Nightingale was clearly gearing up for a confessional of some sort: he had a similar air around him to the few times he’d talked about Ettersburg, although this time he was noticeably not depressed, which I took as a good sign.

“It would seem,” he said quietly, “that we are all exactly where we ought.” 

I smiled at him in a way that I hoped wasn’t too similar to a foundation teacher or a nurse on a home visit. “Seems so, sir.” I raised my pint, and was halfway through a self-satisfied sip when a bottle of vodka exploded behind the counter. All three of the police officers in the room coalesced immediately, although Amani did seem a bit disappointed to leave her potential girlfriend. I saw her mouth ‘call me’ in the woman’s direction, and considering that she didn’t snort or look openly disgusted I figured Amani would be fine on that front.

Nightingale slipped out of the door, presumably to chase the poltergeist, and me and Amani were left to shepherd the pub’s few remaining customers away from the bar. As I was administering first aid to the bartender in the form of a head bandage and some paracetamol, Nightingale returned without much fanfare, visibly disappointed. “Didn’t manage to find him?” I asked, tying off the bandage and giving the bartender what I hoped was a comforting pat on the shoulder.

“I did, but unfortunately he seemed resistant to traditional trapping methods.” He looked concerned about that, which was what reminded me of the note I’d made on my phone.

**plier grist Is vote?**

I deeply regretted not learning to touch type, and also cursed the invention of autocorrect which was clearly out to inconvenience the lives of honest hardworking detectives.

“This looks like gibberish,” I said to Nightingale, “But I promise when I wrote it I knew exactly what I meant.” I looked at it for a bit. “Pretty sure it’s ‘Poltergeist is victim?’”

Nightingale nodded. “That would be a logical conclusion to draw.” He paused thoughtfully. “I may have to do some research, but I remember reading something about Christian spirits needing a licensed exorcist to deal with. If you’ll excuse me.” I let him go with a confused look. Licensed exorcists?

I knew Nightingale would say that without a shred of humour, because The Exorcist was presumably a film that had happened to other people, and for all I knew when he was young people were still having demons cast out by their priest rather than getting sectioned. With a sigh, I waved goodbye to Amani and went back to the hotel with a few rather shabby looking books to while the night away.

Nightingale had been right about the licensed exorcist: Christian spirits, if they retained any sense of self, usually refused to leave the mortal plain without some assistance from a priest. Last Rites, exorcism, a hoover - it was all the same to them as long as it came stamped approved by God, as far as I could tell. A bit of cursory googling informed me that priests _were_ still trained in exorcism, even in the good old stodgy CofE, although thankfully it was mostly How to Convince the Family their Mam Isn’t Possessed.

Sleep was a lot longer coming that night, although I thought that might be long dormant memories of a childhood viewing of The Exorcist rather than anything more psychiatric.

* * *

It was a grey and stormy mid morning. I dutifully trotted along to the station for any updates on the case. The mood in the incident room was considerably better than it had been the previous day, so I was hopeful the whole thing might be cleared up soon and me and Nightingale could get back to London, where the rain mattered less.

“Do you have a suspect?” I asked DCI Palmer, who was badly concealing just how self satisfied he felt.

He nodded. “Joseph Owens - former vicar. Had beef with the victim and he’d been visiting relatives in the town for the week prior - only went back up to Torquay yesterday morning. No alibi for the night in question, either. We’ve got someone at the locksmiths on the Ridgeway in Plympton asking questions, so we should have something concrete to go on by mid afternoon.” 

“What kind of beef?” It seemed to me that an argument over the church fete would need a lot of escalation to get to murder.

Palmer glanced at a file on his desk. “Apparently Owens’ ex-wife left him for Short. Can’t see the appeal of either myself, but it’s definitely a motive worth investigating.”

This seemed good enough to me, so I went out to call Nightingale and make a report. It was still chucking it outside, so I stood under the awning and tried not to shiver.

He listened carefully, which was always a nice way to spend a phone call. “It seems we ought to make the Reverend a visit.” I agreed, and soon enough we were both in the Jag on the way to the ex vicar’s house in Torquay. The rain cleared up around Totnes, with the sky clearing to an unseasonably bright blue.

Owens’ house was set back from the road among palm trees, which was so visually ridiculous it took me a moment to remember we were supposed to be checking for evidence of magic use. If Owens had indeed killed Paul Short with a _forma_ of some kind, there should have been evidence of his training somewhere around the house.

He answered the door with a smile and an offer of tea after we introduced ourselves, which I took to just be how ex-priests operated on retirement. Certainly the few I’d met seemed very sound spiritually, a quality I was inclined to envy. I didn’t notice any _vestigia_ coming through the door - but then I realised that the house was built from wood anyway, which was unusual for the area but not so much that I could reasonably call it suspicious. Owens lead us into the sitting room and bustled off to make the tea. He was a stout white man in his mid-sixties, which was younger than I’d expected from a retired priest (the calling not having an expiry date as far as I was aware.) The room itself was noticeably absent of family photos, and the bookshelves by the television were empty of books, instead being covered in knick knacks of the sort one might get in a shove ha’penny machine in a Torquay arcade.

I got the impression he didn’t use the sitting room very much, although the hoover tracks in the carpet showed he either had a cleaner or was very devoted to keeping up appearances. He came back in with a tray for the tea and poured us each a cup. Earl Grey, I thought, and took a cautious sip. I didn’t particularly want to come all this way only to get poisoned by a man that looked like a low-rent Father Christmas. While I drank the rest of my tea and stayed quiet, Nightingale went through the standard interview format and before long had Owens hanging on his every word. I put down my teacup (gilt edged with flowers on) with a soft clinking sound and stood up.

“Is it alright if I have a look around?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral. 

Owens waved me off, and I went to stick my head uncomfortably close to his possessions.

I paused in the hallway. Owens had a small decorative bowl on the sideboard, with a glitter glue map of Torquay on it and a few seashells stuck on for good measure. It was full of keys, which I had a rummage through until I found, with some surprise, a set that looked a lot like the one I’d seen in the photos that had been sent off to the locksmith. I took a few photos with my phone and put them back. I considered taking them for a stupid moment, but then remembered things like ‘chain of evidence’ and ‘proper procedure’ and ‘bisected by magic’ and thought better of it.

There was a faint _vestigium_ across the entire plan of the bungalow, but as I approached what I assumed was Owens’ study it grew in intensity until I felt the same sharpness I’d sensed on Paul Short’s torso - it felt like nails being hammered through my hands and feet. Definitely something weird going on, I thought. I proceeded with caution, opening the door slowly and not stepping inside until I was sure there wasn’t a demon trap under the carpet. The study was fairly small but still packed wall to wall with books, and in the shadow under the desk I spotted the edge of what I was fairly sure was Newton’s _Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis_ , and a dusty copy of _Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince_ which I assumed had been hidden just in case there was something to it. 

So, clearly a practitioner. I didn’t remember the name from our list of potential Little Crocodiles, although he was the right age. There was a framed photograph of Balliol on the wall, which I put away in the section of my brain marked ‘ASK NIGHTINGALE’, appended with a few exclamation marks. Clearly we’d missed something when it came to Wheatcroft’s many apprentices. Him being a practitioner didn’t necessarily mean he’d been the one to kill Short, but it was a pretty safe bet. I took a few more photos on my phone and crept back to the sitting room, where Nightingale was still talking to Owens. I stayed just out of his line of site and settled in for a nice satisfying eavesdrop.

“And you were trained by…?” Nightingale leant towards Owens, with what some might call a textbook loom.

Owens looked about nervously. “Ah, Wheatcroft, I think. I couldn’t make the dining club because I was involved in the drama society and he made time for me. I never got all the forms down, you understand. After I was sent down I sort of lost contact, just kept practicing and sort of, sort of experimenting, you know the sort of thing.”

I knew exactly the sort of thing, although I was a bit surprised Owens hadn’t dropped dead of a stroke or some other catastrophic brain injury if he’d really spent a good thirty years doing unsupervised magic. Nightingale got pissed enough at me for thirty _minutes_ of it.

Nightingale nodded. “Not that I ever experimented with murder, but I suppose that’s the difference between you and I.” It was clear Owens had accepted his fate, which meant I should really be writing all this down. I fumbled out my notebook and pen and took some notes on what I could remember, although half my mind was still stuck on the copy of Harry Potter stuck under the desk. I still fondly remembered my first copy, which was in a box somewhere in my old room, covered in dust and fading pencil marks. I paused, put my notebook back in my pocket and moved back to the study. 

Sure enough, this particular copy was not exactly what it appeared - nearly every page was covered in pencil notes, and I got the feeling they were nothing to do with the book itself. I sealed it in an evidence bag, thanking my past self for remembering to bring some along, and went back out to the hallway.

Nightingale had stood up. Owens looked like he’d been crying, although he seemed oddly calm for someone who was facing a life sentence.

I followed him out of the door after some overly polite goodbyes, and trudged back to the Jag. The sky was still offensively blue for a chilly March morning. Behind us I heard the door open wide and then slam, which I assumed was our friendly neighbourhood poltergeist making his appointment just in time. A ghostly mist rushed past me, and I almost gave it a friendly wave.

“Definitely him, then?” I asked as we pulled back onto the A38, some time later. 

Nightingale nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “He has confessed.”

I held back a comment about mixing up denominations which I knew would go down badly. "Why did he do it?"

"He said he just... lost control of himself. Which seems damned unlikely to me considering the strength of glamour needed to lure someone out of their bed at 3am." He sighed and reached forward to turn on BBC Four.

Feeling chastened but not sure why, I kept quiet for the rest of the drive. The weather stayed clear all the way into Plymouth, which I found rather in bad taste.

I can’t say why I was unhappy about it. Maybe I still had some lingering expectation of priests to be pillars of the community, helpful to their parishioners, only annoyed about the General Synod if at all, and definitely not cutting faithful churchgoers in half in the middle of the night. Even my loosely defined religious upbringing hadn’t escaped that, apparently.

We reported in with Palmer, who seemed happy to have the magical element of the case more or less wrapped up. Obviously ‘I cut him in half with magic’ was a confession unlikely to come out of anyone not planning an insanity defense, but I discovered later they’d found some skin cells in the pool of blood on the church floor, so Owens was pretty fucked once the DNA results came back. It felt like an anticlimax, after some of the previous showdowns we’d engaged in with other practitioners, but after Skygarden I was absolutely fine with a few less bombastic conclusions.

I went to find Amani, who was texting someone under the table and slowly filling out paperwork with the other hand. Now that the actually magical part of the investigation was over, me and Nightingale were due to head back up to London the next day. I got the feeling he had plans for the evening, but I wasn’t entirely sure what.

“Be sad to see you go,” said Amani, grinning. “What would I do without someone to mess up my files and get me followed by a poltergeist.”

“Truly, your life will be empty and meaningless without me.”

She tilted her head, as if to give an objective assessment. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

* * *

As it turned out, Nightingale’s plans for that evening involved picking up the current vicar from her house and going ghost hunting. Not that he told me that in so many words, although Reverend Green seemed quite excited by the whole business. Possibly Nightingale hadn’t told her that the exorcism was going to be of an ex-parishioner. 

“So, there’s a magic branch of the Met and you’re it.” It was a statement, not a question, which I appreciated. I still wasn’t a big fan of explaining Isaac Newton’s second career to random members of the public, not least because there was enough controversy about his work on calculus without adding magic into the mix.

“That’s right,” I said. “You’re taking this very well.”

“I read a lot of fantasy,” she said with the air of someone who’d spent some time on LiveJournal. I decided it was better not to ask. “And besides, I am a priest. You’re supposed to believe in things most people don’t, so it’s not too much of a stretch to magic wands and house elves and whatever else.”

I had a sudden and overwhelming mental image of Molly as a house elf and had to cover my mouth to hide the giggle that was trying to escape. Nightingale gave me a disapproving look in the rearview mirror. “Fair enough, ma’am,” I said once I’d got myself under control.

The rest of the drive passed quickly, although I still wasn’t entirely sure where we were going right up to the moment we pulled into the Derriford Hospital car park. Or one of them. There were a lot of car parks, which I figured was another sign someone was ruining the NHS. Anyway, car parks were the last thing on my mind when we ended up in a lift going down to the morgue. I was just wondering whether they’d be keeping Short in one or two drawers when we arrived to find the whole place looking like a hurricane’d been through it. Or, I corrected myself as yet another drawer was pulled out by some unseen force, was still in the process of going through it.

There’s a magnitude scale when it comes to poltergeists. Some, like my old friend Mr Punch, were old, pissed off and had used all the time they’d spent languishing in graveyards and sewers amassing a frightening amount of power and influence. Others, like the dearly departed Mr Short, were much easier to deal with. Reverend Green had been on all the appropriate courses on exorcism, although as I mentioned about 90% of them are about why reported demon possessions are usually the psychiatric ward’s shout rather than the priesthood’s. 

The remaining 10%, however, was a recitation in Latin which I’m proud to say I could almost understand - although how much of that was residuals from The Exorcist I’ll probably never know. Mr Short appeared before us, looking pleasantly human shaped and all in one piece, which was all I was hoping for out of the afterlife. Reverend Green read a prayer from a book which looked older than Nightingale, and then he was gone. The papers and occasional body parts that had been floating in the air dropped to the floor with a sharp thwack.

We drove Reverend Green back to her house, which seemed only fair since it was our fault she’d been out in the first place, and gratefully accepted the offer of tea. My mug had a picture of Hermione Granger on it, which might’ve been intentional on her part. She also didn’t seem to approve of putting sugar in tea, which I manfully tolerated with stoic silence, while Nightingale again managed the trick of looking perfectly comfortable wherever he happened to end up, whether a country priest’s sofa or in a wizard duel with a Night Witch. It was probably the Edwardian upbringing.

It was getting very late by the time we set off back to London. I drove for the first half while Nightingale attempted to sleep without looking like it, which didn’t quite work, and then I pretended not to notice him waking up at the services and we switched sides. Arriving in London at 3am is definitely one way to avoid the worst of the capital’s traffic, and Molly was still awake to welcome us home, in her own way.

Idly, I wondered if she even slept. Probably not.

“Goodnight, sir,” I called up the stairs.

Nightingale smiled softly. “Goodnight, Peter.”

**Author's Note:**

> So having read all five books in the last three days, my brain could do nothing but write and so I produced this in the course of just over 24 hours. The setting is accurate but I promise I didn't base anything too closely on people I know from the area (especially the murderous priest). Well, apart from my mum. Hi mum, if you're reading this!
> 
> Title is from Stormy Weather, because it's jazz and we all know how the books feel about jazz. If you want to find me around the internet my tumblr is @deathbredons, currently lots of Harry Potter and Star Trek but doubtless soon to be overrun by Rivers of London.


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